


Angel Stock and Demon Breed

by Square Pudding (Square_Pudding)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), But in this case yes on the dick too, Crack Treated Seriously, Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley is a Bottom (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Experienced Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fluff and Smut, Gray-Asexuality, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), It's been a while, It's rotten work/Not for me. Not if it's you, Just because you love someone doesn't mean they don't annoy you, Living Together, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Metaphysical Sex, Non-Human Genitalia, Not bottom in the sense of takes a dick but in the sense of never starts the RP log, Other, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Silly Porn Tropes Played Straight, Sort Of, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), bridal carry, monster pregnancy, non-human pregnancy, or something like it anyway, tfw your old boss shows up while you're smooching and asks you to work for free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-20 04:28:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Square_Pudding/pseuds/Square%20Pudding
Summary: “I suppose I should be flattered,” Aziraphale said with wholly inappropriate amusement, leaning back to slide off his jacket and waistcoat while Crowley fought to not completely shake apart on the bed. “Now, let’s see. You mentioned something about rubber phalluses earlier, so should I take that to mean you’re amenable to penetration?”“Yesssss.” The word hissed out between Crowley’s teeth without even the decency to ask his permission. He sought the buttons of Aziraphale’s neatly pressed shirt and made an actualwhinewhen the angel caught both his hands by the wrists and pinned them to the mattress to either side of his head. The infernal Mark pulsed where it lay carved into his skin, the curse wending its way deeper into his body. “Azsssiraphale, pleasssse…”Angels are sexless. Demons, not so much.(Now with an epilogue!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Clutch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20359159) by [Ponderosa (ponderosa121)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa). 

> So I read Ponderosa's lovely oviposition fic "Clutch" (linked above) and thought to myself "what if this, but Crowley suffers more?" Because why have faves if you aren't going to bully them.
> 
> General CW: I'm asexual, non-binary, and an atheist, and all three of those things inform this fic. If you're uncomfortable with human bodies being described as gross or the possibility God isn't actually happy her OCs got together, this porn may not be for you.
> 
> Thanks to Doxy and Ponderosa for feedback!

Angels were sexless. Demons, not so much.

If he were asked, and drunk enough to be candid about it, Crowley might say he didn’t feel as though he had a sex regardless. He had plenty of genders, obviously, which he switched in and out of as casually as he might a jacket or a hairstyle. But how much testosterone did a human body need in its system before it was “biologically” male? It was the wrong question stemming from a faulty premise. If the Almighty were so concerned about the rigidity of it all, She should’ve used fewer variables.

Unfortunately, Downstairs wasn’t interested in what humans or Crowley thought on the matter, because at the end of the day, it was about numbers. Or more specifically, how to stack the deck. 

It worked like this: every demon below a certain rank had a heat cycle, usually kicking in every 4-100 years. Crowley’d drawn one of the short straws that day and been assigned a six-year cycle, which was often enough to be a total pain in his ass (and elsewhere) but not so disruptive he couldn’t do his job. Generally, mating followed a mammalian template, although as with everything to do with the application of mortal concepts, Hell was a bit slapdash with it. The same demon could sire a brood during one heat and lay a clutch during another, and the actual shape and quantity of offspring could vary each time.

Over the millennia, Crowley had personally given birth to three spawns of frogs, six clutches of snakes, two litters of hellhounds, several dozen fire-breathing salamanders, and (thanks to a regrettable night of drinking with his seemed-cool-at-the-time Australian counterpart) one very mean koala. And the less he thought about any of it, the better.

They weren’t _ children_, was the thing. Not the way you or I would understand the word. As soon as the offspring were born (or hatched, or whatever), they wiggled off on their own and Crowley never heard from any of them again, so it was just as well he didn’t dwell on the creatures as _ his _ in any meaningful sense. It made the whole thing easier.

Starting at around 3,004 BC, Crowley spent as many of his heats as he could on Earth. Something about watching the Almighty drown countless human children put him off from the whole idea of bringing new life into the world, even of the monstrous and damned variety. He couldn’t _ always _ avoid it -- sometimes he swore Lord Beelzebub called a meeting specifically to get him Downstairs and on all fours for all the assembled dignitaries of Hell -- but it didn’t stop Crowley from trying. Besides, it was nice, spending just two weeks in total agony rather than being out of commission for months or years at a time (because, as with the shape and quantity, gestation times often varied as well). He had _ things to do _ on Earth, exciting things, and it all went by far too quickly to waste time breeding abominations.

For the most part, his system worked splendidly. Hell only required he went into heat, after all; it hadn’t possessed the foresight to set quotas on offspring, nor anticipated how creative humans could get with dildos. It wasn’t until the 21st century when he was raising Warlock that Crowley actually hit the first speed bump. Not from the Dowlings -- convincing them that the two weeks of paid holiday in Nanny Ashtoreth’s contract had been there from the start was a trivial task -- but from Aziraphale. 

The great thing about the Arrangement, up to that point, was that Crowley and Aziraphale saw each other only as often as they needed to for work (or because one was craving company, or because one had a heavy couch in need of moving). Life on Earth moved fast but it rarely moved _ so _ fast Crowley couldn’t plausibly vanish for a few weeks at a stretch without Aziraphale inquiring about it, and that distance served two purposes. First, it rationed their exposure to one another, which is important in any successful co-living situation, whether a studio apartment or an entire planet. Second, it kept Aziraphale far away from Crowley’s embarrassing personal problems, like his tendency to shed _ and _ molt, and the rashes he sometimes got by touching holy relics without thinking. And, most importantly, his heats.

But that all changed once they were godfathers. Suddenly they were in one another’s lives constantly and there was no hiding anything from anyone. The Arrangement ballooned from occasionally covering each other’s day jobs to all sorts of little errands -- picking up the dry cleaning, dropping off mail, stopping by the other’s apartment to water the plants or to rescue deliveries from an unattended doorstep. Which was all well and good in Crowley’s opinion, because he liked doing things for Aziraphale, probably more than he should have… except now an extended absence like this one required an _ explanation_.

“But what am I to thell the boy, my dhear?” Aziraphale asked, then frowned and willed away the buck teeth from his Brother Francis disguise. “That Nanny doesn’t _ love _ him anymore?”

They preferred not to interact at all while on the Dowling estate, but in light of circumstances they’d called this meeting in Aziraphale’s gardening shed, which possessed a notable absence of any gardening equipment but did have a very nice stove and recliner. 

“Yes, exactly,” Crowley answered, shuddering and pulling his spiderweb shawl tighter around his shoulders. It didn’t matter how often he went into heat, the first symptoms always seemed to catch him up from behind. “Let him know love is conditional, that we’re always one step from abandonment, that placing faith in someone is just a recipe for disappointment--”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Aziraphale said, indignant, and Crowley felt privately relieved. “What the devil’s come over you, Crowley? You look positively feverish. Are you sure you don’t want to sit down and have a cup of tea before you head out?”

Crowley declined, of course, because as usual Aziraphale had unwittingly hit the nail directly on the head. The devil _ was _ coming over him, coating his insides with something he didn’t want and had no means to resist, and if he stayed even one second longer there was a strong chance he’d start doing something unthinkable like asking for help.

“I’m fine, angel,” he said. “Just do me a favor and don’t stuff the boy’s head full of goodness while I’m gone.”

Crowley left the Dowling estate and headed straight to his apartment in Mayfair. As soon as he was through the door, he flung off his sensible tweed skirt and kitten heels, put on a certain genre of nature documentary, and masturbated himself into a coma. If Brother Francis’s broad, sunbaked forearms figured into his fantasies at any point, he considered that entirely Aziraphale’s fault and not worth the self-examination.

* * *

And that should have been the last time he had needed to deal with it. The heat wasn’t part of _ him_, after all, it was part of being a _ demon_, and -- at least on the professional level -- he no longer held that title.

Following the not-end of the world, Crowley found himself quietly removed from Hell’s mailing lists (although annoyingly he still got the daily Slack digests). Inhuman Resources even sent along a tidy little severance package, which he’d been sure to have Aziraphale douse in the nearest font of holy water before it came alive and beheaded anyone.

It was everything he could’ve asked for out of an early retirement. No more reports to file, no more quarterly performance reviews, all the time in the world to catch up on his shows. And, the icing on the cake, no more surrendering control of his body every six years to a haywire biological impulse that had been implanted in him by literally Satan himself.

That’s what he had assumed, at any rate, until exactly one year and five days after Adam’s soft-reset of reality.

It happened while at lunch with Aziraphale. He was always going to lunch with Aziraphale now, and dinner, shows, concerts, museums, gardens -- all the things they’d used to do under the pretenses of clandestine meetings, now out in the open as any normal pair of courting humans would do. And they _ were _ courting, after a fashion. Neither had actually articulated the change out loud, but following that fateful night at Crowley’s apartment -- when they’d attempted one chaste little kiss, panicked, and then wound up on the floor somehow wearing each other’s bodies -- they had accepted this as a natural progression of their relationship and proceeded accordingly. Outwardly it changed very little, except they held hands more often.

On this particular day, they were lunching in Cardiff, at a lovely new French place which all the reviews said did remarkable things with oysters. Crowley, feeling buzzed and besotted and terribly well-fed, indulged Aziraphale to let him tip one of the half-shelled oysters into his mouth, the way they hadn’t done since Rome. Except this time, when the angel’s fingers brushed his bottom lip, Crowley felt warmth flooding across his cheeks.

“Oh,” he said as he swallowed, completely forgetting to chew.

“All right there, old boy?” Aziraphale asked, looking amused.

Crowley felt himself swaying forward slightly. He cleared his throat, but there was nothing obstructing it, and he didn’t exactly need to breathe to begin with. Slowly, he blinked.

“Must’ve had more wine than I thought,” he muttered, though even as he said it he knew it wasn’t true. They were only on their second bottle, which, for a pair of immortals with 6,000 years of experience as high-functioning alcoholics, barely even tipped the register. He felt the heat travel from his face down through the core of his body and a prickle of dread started at the nape of his neck. “Yeah, erm. Think I’m gonna visit the ladies’--” He checked his current attire. “--gents’ and freshen up a bit.”

Aziraphale had that look of mildly perturbed concentration which said he didn’t remotely believe Crowley’s explanation but he was far too English to ask about it. “Ah, right. Don’t fall in, I suppose.”

Generally speaking, angels and demons did not need to use the facilities any more than they needed to eat or sleep, although if left unattended the biomatter they put into their bodies _ would _ try to come out the other end. Crowley and Aziraphale both considered this a messy and inelegant solution and tended to just banish any foreign substances before things progressed that far, although sometimes curiosity (or just advanced drunkenness) won out. Crowley, for his part, had urinated exactly three times in 6,000 years and done the other thing exactly once -- and concluded that it was just too much like spawning to be worth the novelty.

(Most humans would likely object to a bowel movement being compared to pregnancy in this way, but Crowley held many views humans would find appalling. For instance, his favorite Coen Brothers film was _ Intolerable Cruelty_.)

All this is to say that restaurant washrooms usually held very little utility for a demon, unless they were there on business. And while many of his former colleagues weren’t picky in this regard, Crowley had always preferred to handle his temptations somewhere with better acoustics. 

He bypassed the stalls as he entered the men’s room and went straight for the sink instead, barely managing to brace himself at the edge of the wash basin before his knees started to give out from under him.

“No, no, no, no--” His knuckles blanched where they gripped the basin, one of those shallow steel contraptions which were ostensibly ecofriendly but so confusing to use that Crowley had at one point considered it one of his better ideas. “Stay leg-shaped, I don’t care what else you do but _ stay leg-shaped_\--”

He caught his gaze in the mirror, his glasses having fallen askew thanks to the sudden and extremely unasked-for torrent of sweat streaming down his face. The yellow irises had spread nearly to the corners, leaving very little of the white sclera visible. That by itself would have been cause for concern, even without the chills rippling up and down his spine and the sharp burning sensation spreading through his lower belly, the knife-like drag of blistering skin as the Mark began to manifest.

Idiotic business, Crowley had always thought, the bit with the Mark. As if demons couldn’t tell perfectly well by scent when one of their number was entering heat.

Shit. Other demons. Agents of Hell didn’t tend to stay topside if they didn’t have to, but Crowley supposed Downstairs would need _ someone _ to fill his old post, and even a visiting demon would be able to pick up his scent if they were anywhere in the same hemisphere. What if they hadn’t bothered to go after him after their failed holy water gambit last year because they knew there was a way to get him on his own when he was vulnerable? All anyone had to do was touch him like this and he’d be on all fours _ pleading _ to be bred, stuffed full with 10 kinds of hellspawn--

Crowley cried out, losing the battle to remain upright as he sank hard on his knees on the cold bathroom tile. Even thinking about it was enough to flood his cunt, hot slick soaking through the crotch of his dark jeans and down the insides of his thighs. He needed a cock inside him, an ovipositor, tentacles, something, _ everything, all of it_, fucking all his holes until he burst. Every second he wasn’t being touched felt like being incinerated from within.

Needed to get out. Needed to get to safety. Why the Heaven had they decided on going all the way to _ Wales _ for lunch? He’d have to use his powers. Snap his fingers, will himself back to London, his apartment, somewhere with enough hexes and other protections to at least slow down whoever might be coming for him--

“Good heavens! Crowley!”

He jolted, the touch of a hand at his shoulder simultaneously as scalding as a church floor and _ not enough_. People usually couldn’t sneak up on Crowley, especially not someone like Aziraphale, who never tried too hard to conceal his angelic presence. (“Because it’d be _ rude_,” he’d said, the one time Crowley had asked him about it.) And yet there he was, steadying Crowley on the floor of a restaurant washroom as though the demon were a first year university student coming off of baby’s first overdose.

“Goodness, you’re burning up,” Aziraphale said, the back of his free hand pressed to Crowley’s forehead. It was a hell of an understatement, considering his blood felt like it was boiling out of his body into steam. “Thought perhaps the oysters hadn’t agreed with you, but _ this _ \-- Let’s get you home, right away, I should think--”

“Ssss’too far.” The words filtered out between clenched teeth as a pathetic little hiss, as Aziraphale began pulling Crowley’s still-mostly-human shape into his arms. “Won’t--”

But he felt it, the shift in air pressure, the drop in humidity as 150 miles of English topography compressed itself into the breadth of a thought. And then Aziraphale was simply _ standing _ there in Crowley’s chic villain lair-_cum_-apartment, the demon slumped against his chest and sinking under several cubic tons of vertigo as the physics of their instantaneous travel caught up to them.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed, sounding equal parts distressed and exasperated, as if Crowley were choosing that moment to collapse like a puppet with its strings cut just to inconvenience him. Rather than fight the sudden extra gravity piled on Crowley’s shoulders, he just sank down onto the slate floor beside him, keeping as much of Crowley’s body gathered in his lap as he could manage.

Mistake. That was a mistake. Aziraphale’s preferred shape emitted very little by way of pheromones, but drawn this close to his physical form Crowley was inhaling every particle of it, the scent of his skin, the anxious traces of sweat, all the low-level olfactory information humans put out without even realizing it. And above that was his bloody cologne of course, like smelling the inside of an old lady’s handbag, floral and musty and so overpowering Crowley would hate it on literally any other creature in existence, but because it was Aziraphale it was comforting and warm and he wanted to sink right into it, never come up for air again.

“Angel,” Crowley gasped, pleaded, nails digging into the fabric of Aziraphale’s trousers, tightening then relaxing, like a kneading kitten. “You have to. Leave.”

Because if he didn’t, if Crowley lay curled in Aziraphale’s lap like a wounded animal even one second longer, he was going to--

“Don’t be silly,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll go back for the bill later. And we can collect the car tomorrow.”

A bubble of laughter rose up in Crowley’s throat but popped before it reached his lips, coming out as a reedy little wheeze instead. His ever-practical, thick-headed, clever, _ stupid _ angel.

As if to drive the assessment home, Aziraphale brushed a few strands of hair out of Crowley’s eyes and said, “This is the same fever you caught when Warlock was six, isn’t it?”

“Sssomethin’ like that,” Crowley conceded. Even the lightest touch from Aziraphale’s fingers was frying the circuits in his brain but he couldn’t muster the energy to tear himself away. His inner thighs were _ drenched_, just completely soaked through the jeans, every little leg twitch producing a humiliating squelch that caused him to flush as red as his hair. How was Aziraphale not recoiling just from the sound, the _ stench _ of it? “I’ll be fine, jusss’ have to…”

“And, I expect, the same fever you had six years before that, and the one six years before that?”

Crowley closed his eyes in defeat.

“I’m not an idiot, Crowley,” Aziraphale reminded him gently. He stopped combing warm fingers through the demon’s hair and cradled his head instead, as though that might quell his squirming and not just fill Crowley’s head with hot static. “I thought for a while this was, I don’t know, a routine torture of some kind that they must be putting you through. Making sure you were receiving your designated allotment of suffering. It seemed in keeping with Hell’s usual approach to policy enforcement, from what you’ve told me over the years. I believed that by giving you a wide berth I was helping the best way that I could, but--”

_ Hell_. Now that Aziraphale said it, Crowley’s mind started replaying a thousand little moments from his past heats. The times he would emerge to find a bottle of wine or a basket of comfort food outside his door; the way Aziraphale would sometimes pick up a few temptations for him without being asked…

“--I don’t see why that policy has to continue, in light of… of everything being what it is now,” Aziraphale continued. “So. If you’re going to keep having these fevers, I’d like to know how I can help make them easier for you.”

Crowley would have liked to answer with something definitive. _ ‘You can’t,’ _ or _ ‘I don’t want you to.’ _ Instead, what came out was a weak “Ssss’bit disgusssstin’.”

“Oh, you silly old snake, nothing about you could disgust me even if you wanted it to.”

This was an abject lie, Crowley thought. But for one fragile, desolate moment his mind landed on something, a bit from a play he’d once watched maybe, some sentimental thing that wrenched his heart right open and let the angel in as it always seemed to do.

_ (“It’s rotten work.” _

_ “Not to me. Not if it’s you.”) _

With considerable effort, Crowley managed to push himself upright, out of Aziraphale’s lap and into a sitting position. The cool slate floor provided just the smallest amount of relief for his overheated limbs. He felt in shambles, glasses already fallen off somewhere, jacket sliding off one shoulder, every inch of skin blotchy and damp.

“Sss’not a fever,” he began, pulling the words together one at a time like any one of them might finally be enough to make Aziraphale bolt. “M’in heat, angel.”

“Well, yes, I gathered you were feeling warmer than usu-- oh. Oh!” Aziraphale’s eyes, already too damned large, seemed to almost double in size as realization dawned. “That would explain the, erm, unique bouquet coming from your--”

“Why I ssmell like the inside of the Ark,” Crowley finished for him, grimacing. When Hell was figuring out how sex between demons ought to work, it had basically consulted a list and then checked ‘all of the above.’ He knew from a truly _ humiliating _ amount of experience that his heats made him smell irresistible to snakes, dogs, moose, most species of frogs, leopard slugs, and Conservative MPs. And that was just the baseline, before his body threw in who knew what other random sex chemicals, resulting in new combinations _ every damned time_. “Usssually clears up in a fortnight. Jus’ help me over to the bedroom; ‘ve got everything I need there.”

“Right. Yes.” Aziraphale nodded fervently, probably imagining ‘everything’ as being plenty of water and a change of clothes, not a wardrobe full of bizarrely shaped sex toys. He climbed to his feet and, just as effortlessly as he had before, scooped Crowley into his arms.

_ “Angel!” _ Crowley protested, flushing to the tips of his ears again. Reflexively, he wrapped an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder for balance, because for whatever infernal reason Aziraphale was choosing to carry him _ bridal style_. His skin burned from the sheer surface area of bodily contact, even through their respective layers of clothing.

“Try to bear with it, my dear,” Aziraphale said, unfazed by the demon’s squirming as he adjusted the not-inconsiderable weight in his arms. Crowley couldn’t tell if his ears buzzed because of the blood rushing to his head or because Aziraphale had used a minor miracle to make the lifting easier. He’d become freer with his powers since his discharge from Heaven, but this struck even Crowley as a little ridiculous. “It’s only a few feet, unless you’ve gone and rearranged the place since I was here last.”

Aziraphale had actually not been back to Crowley’s apartment since that night more than a year ago, when the world had failed to end. This didn’t particularly bother Crowley -- they both agreed the bookshop was far more comfortable, and it wasn’t like Aziraphale hadn’t stopped by his place before, on plant-watering errands or to drop off what Crowley now realized constituted _ care packages _ \-- but now Aziraphale was _ carrying him to bed in his arms _ as if it were the simplest, easiest, most matter-of-fact thing in the world. Crowley wasn’t certain he wouldn’t spontaneously combust before they got there.

“Here we are,” Aziraphale said, less than a minute later, when he was easing the uncombusted demon down onto the cool, welcoming sheets of his massive bed. Rather than do Crowley the kindness of leaving him that way, Aziraphale set about peeling off his clothes, one sweat-soaked layer at a time. The peacoat came away easily enough, followed by the waistcoat, then the scarf and chain, the tissue-thin fitted shirt which dragged like sandpaper over the sharp angles of Crowley’s ribs and his stupidly hard nipples.

“You can jus’--” The cool air hit his naked chest all at once and he shuddered, biting off the rest of the sentence. It wasn’t until he was laid out on his back with Aziraphale’s clever hands working off his belt and tugging his drenched jeans off his hips one stubborn half-inch at a time that it occurred to Crowley just what Aziraphale was doing. “You bastard, you’re enjoying thissss.”

“I’d never,” Aziraphale breezed, lying so effortlessly that Crowley fell a bit in love all over again. He tutted when the demon finally managed to will the jeans straight out of existence. “Really, my dear.”

“Tell you what,” Crowley said, now lying naked as the day of his creation, give or take a pair of socks. “You can unwrap me like a present all you want when m’not burning up from a literal fucking curse.”

“Reproduction isn’t a curse,” Aziraphale said, sounding offended on the Almighty’s behalf. But then, as his eyes raked down the front of Crowley’s exposed torso and he stalled at the sight of the Mark, he covered his mouth with a hand. “Oh, _ Crowley_.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” he lied, wishing for a moment he had half the natural talent for it that Aziraphale did. He crept a hand over his hips, crossing his arm over the blackened lines scored into his skin which formed the complex sigil just above his pubic bone. “Just ssstings a little. M’fine.”

They had seen each other nude plenty of times over the centuries, including in various states of injury, but nothing like this. It was raw and vulnerable and Crowley was going to bite clear through his tongue if Aziraphale kept gazing at him like that, eyes shiny with pity and barely withheld tears.

Jerkily, the angel lowered his hand from his face and brought a couple fingers close to Crowley’s stomach. “May I--?”

“Don’t,” Crowley said, too quickly, too sharply, twisting away from Aziraphale’s touch before he could get any nearer. “It goes away when the heat ends anyway, no harm done.”

“But two weeks, you said.” Aziraphale sounded wretched. “Isn’t there anything we can do to -- to clear it up any faster?”

Of course there was. What better way to incentivize cooperation from Satan’s thralls than by giving them an easy way out? Crowley’s whole demonic form was screaming for it, boiling itself alive begging for this one simple thing.

Instead he said, “Not really.”

Aziraphale heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said, appearing unconvinced. “Let’s work on getting you comfortable, at least. You do have a washroom in this place, yes? Getting the, er, excretions off your skin would probably do you wonders.”

“Honestly I just need a wank.” Crowley frowned when Aziraphale failed to so much as bat an eye at the word. He would’ve assumed it was Grade-A angel-flustering material. “Do us a favor and head over the wardrobe, would you? Just grab the fattest rubber cock you can find. Should do nnnuh, nicsssely…”

He trailed off, because Aziraphale was suddenly kneeling on the bed above him, mouth pressed into a determined line as he planted a hand on the sheets near Crowley’s head.

“If that’s truly what you want, my dear,” he said, leaning closer, too close, practically pressed on top of him now, “I shan’t stop you. But you should know I’m -- I’m not totally opposed to lending a hand directly--”

“Aziraphale--”

“--admittedly, it’s been a while, but I understand it’s like riding a velocipede, you never quite forget--”

Crowley’s mind skidded right over the angel’s dated terminology and collided straight into the brick wall of what he seemed to be implying.

“You _ what?_”

“Well!” Aziraphale huffed. “It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time, now did it? At least not until the Grigori took everything entirely too far and ruined it for the rest of us. Once the Almighty caught wind of it and started cracking down, of course I--”

“You -- _ diddled humans?_”

“You don’t have to make it sound so perverse!”

“It _ is _ perverse! Angel, that’s practically like buggering a sheep.”

“It _ is not,_” Aziraphale all but shouted, cheeks flushing almost as dark as Crowley’s. “They’re intelligent creatures; they’re perfectly capable of consent. And don’t try to tell me your old side hasn’t done its share of -- of interfering with humans--”

“‘Interfere,’ right, that’s certainly not a word you use when you’re feeling guilty about fornicating with lower life forms--”

“For Heaven’s sake, Crowley! It was five thousand years ago. I haven’t done it since and--” He broke off, frowning as the demon dragged a hand over his face. “--and we’re not talking about humans right now, we’re talking about _ you_. I can’t imagine all you must have suffered over the years, bearing this on your own, but we’re in this together now and I’d like to help, if you’d let me. That’s what it means to be on our side, wouldn’t you say?”

Crowley fell silent, mouth slack as he stared up at Aziraphale and the words slowly sank in. His stomach fluttered. He felt it filling up with a curious warmth that seemed to have nothing to do with his heat; soft instead of burning, gentle instead of possessive.

For the first time since the fever had started, he felt an urgent desire to _ touch_, to be the one to reach out and gather the angel closer to him. He held off, barely. Even now he was afraid of going too fast.

“Think you could -- with your lips? K-kiss, um.” Crowley swallowed on a suddenly paper-dry throat. “Me,” he clarified.

Smooth as ever, Anthony J. Crowley.

Aziraphale made a face. Not of disgust, more like the expression he wore when he’d had his heart set on the salmon mousse but the kitchen had run out. “I don’t know,” he said. “Suppose we swapped again on accident?”

It was a distinct possibility, and a major reason they hadn’t tried kissing since they’d bungled their way into the real meaning of Agnes’s prophecy. They’d practiced the transfer since then and _ should _ be able to limit the point of contact to just their hands now, but there was always a risk that something would slip, that their concentration would fail and they’d end up destroying each other as well as half of London.

Or they could flip successfully and Aziraphale would find himself suddenly stuffed into a corporeal shell coated in residual demonic lust. Crowley highly doubted the angel would want to go that far for this relationship of theirs, no matter how suppressed his gag reflex.

Still, a moment later Aziraphale surprised him again. He nodded.

“All right,” he said. “If that’s what you’d like, my dear. I’m sure I can manage.”

It was just a press of lips. It should have been nothing, barely a sensation, cool and too-pliant flaps of moist skin slotting together as indifferently as a handshake. But it wasn’t like that. For whatever reason, the heat or the excitement, the trepidation still unresolved from the last time they had tried this, the contact sent a pleasantly warm tingle through Crowley’s body, setting every nerve alight as it went. He sucked in a breath through his nose and it burned, not harshly like the Mark but like a banked fire spreading beneath the surface of his skin, until his eyelids fluttered and he was making a soft, involuntary noise in the back of his throat.

For just a moment, Crowley felt his form slipping, the edges of his corporeal shape going indistinct as his much larger true form strained against the confines of its container. And he could feel Aziraphale too, his presence seeping into him, particles and antiparticles swirling together in a quantum dance that would leave them both annihilated if even one pair collided.

Appropriately, it was an orgasm which actually yanked them both back from the brink. It thundered through Crowley’s lower body, sank its claws into the muscles of his inner thighs and _ twisted_, everything clenching and shuddering together with a new flood of juices.

Crowley tore out of the kiss with a breathless “Fuck!” He turned his head aside onto the sheets, pressing his legs together in a futile bid to stop the twitching.

“I suppose I should be flattered,” Aziraphale said with wholly inappropriate amusement, leaning back to slide off his jacket and waistcoat while Crowley fought to not completely shake apart on the bed. “Now, let’s see. You mentioned something about rubber phalluses earlier, so should I take that to mean you’re amenable to penetration?”

“Yesssss.” The word hissed out between Crowley’s teeth without even the decency to ask his permission. He sought the buttons of Aziraphale’s neatly pressed shirt and made an actual _ whine _ when the angel caught both his hands by the wrists and pinned them to the mattress to either side of his head. The infernal Mark pulsed where it lay carved into his skin, the curse wending its way deeper into his body as his thighs trembled and his cunt squeezed around nothing. “Azsssiraphale, pleasssse…”

“Just be a tick. I’m a slight bit rusty,” Aziraphale confessed, releasing one of Crowley’s wrists to fiddle with the front of his trousers. He bit his lower lip, sticking a hand down to rub at the smooth expanse between his thighs as though to encourage the Effort along. “Rather like getting an old engine to turn over, I suppose.”

“No more bloody analogiesss or I’m--”

The engine did, finally, turn over. And when, a few seconds later, Aziraphale pressed the thing against Crowley’s slit and pushed inside, a steep gasp caught in the demon’s throat.

Crowley had had countless breeding partners over the millennia, demons of all shapes and sizes and ranks. If he were feeling charitable about it, he’d say a few of them hadn’t been all that bad, really, just trapped in the same endless cycle of degradation that he was. _ Most _ of them had been pretty awful, of course, the counts and dukes especially, always just jamming whatever unnature had given them into Crowley’s hole before he was ready, but occasionally it had been almost nice. Painless, over with quickly. For thousands of years, Crowley had assumed that was the best he could hope for.

He’d never had anyone he might call a _ lover _ before.

Physically, it felt the same as it always did, sticky and clumsy and too much, the breeding instincts of half a dozen feral creatures all crying out with joy over fulfilling their purpose while between his legs his muscles ached and his nerves sizzled. Aziraphale had managed to bury himself inside with one stroke, hardly any friction at all, no animalistic barbs or knots or other weird surprises, just warm and thick and astonishingly gentle. When he thrust in, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley and held him pressed close to his chest, rocking into him with such tenderness that Crowley found himself clinging in response. His yellow eyes squeezed shut, small noises stealing past the tight press of his lips.

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale said softly, one hand coming up to cradle the back of Crowley’s head, dragging a few fingers through his damp hair. “Don’t hold back, my dear. It’s just us now.”

Crowley wanted to snarl that he was sparing Aziraphale his noises for _ his _ sake, not his own. But when he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out was a low, needy groan.

“That’s it,” Aziraphale said, his other hand winding down between their bodies to stroke his fingers over Crowley’s folds, probably searching for a clit. He found the place where their bodies connected instead, and Crowley shuddered, the coarse ridges of the angel’s thumb brushing over taut, delicate skin. “There’s a lamb. You’re doing so well.”

_ There’s a lamb. _ Crowley’s eyes shot open again just to roll up into his skull, part from the oversensation and part because, well, Aziraphale. Of all the immortal beings Crowley could’ve fallen hopelessly in love with, it had to be him, didn’t it? With his stupid bow ties and catchphrases and magic tricks, his overflowing compassion when any sensible person would’ve taken in Crowley’s pathetic, stinking, oozing body and sped off in the opposite direction.

He clung tighter, and may’ve made some undignified noise into the crook of Aziraphale’s shoulder as a second wonderful, excruciating climax shook through him.

It couldn’t be the Great Plan, he thought wildly, as fire roiled through his veins and Aziraphale’s strokes quickened. It cheapened things, the idea that the Almighty was just sitting back somewhere and smiling benevolently at all of this, like She’d intended it this way all along. Hereditary enemies coming together in the very definition of an unholy union. Crowley would much rather that they were both defying God, that every moment Aziraphale spent with him they both risked being smited on the spot. Because that would mean their choices had _ mattered_.

“Azssirapha-- Aszirra--” The consonants fumbled on Crowley’s tongue, nails digging into the flesh of Aziraphale’s shoulders as the angel’s Effort swelled inside him and his thrusts grew ragged, building chaotically toward his body’s orgasm while the friction against Crowley’s inner walls tipped over into unbearable. “I want it… Pleassse…”

_ (Just a fantasy. Brother Francis’s sunbaked forearms and his virile sweat soaking through the thick hair of his chest. His fat toadstool of a cock spilling inside Nanny Ashteroth’s entirely human pussy, seeding her, their own Garden of Eden growing in miniature inside a fragile, mortal body. Crowley could never have it, could never even admit to thinking about it, but he wanted it, wanted it, _ wanted _ \--) _

His entire body spasmed when Aziraphale came, arms and legs wrapping desperately around his slippery, sweat-sheened back. His inner walls squeezed, churning along the angel’s shaft as if trying to wring out a last few drops, clamping down like a vise to keep him buried inside as long as possible.

“You know,” Crowley babbled nonsensically, as he sank purring against the sheets, and everything was still sticky and awkward and disgusting but he was determined to just luxuriate in this feeling of utter satisfaction for the moment, until exhaustion claimed him. “Some ducks have vaginas like corkssscrews.”

He felt Aziraphale’s ribs vibrate silently against his chest and just _ knew _ that the angel was trying very hard not to laugh.

* * *

It was too much to hope that Crowley’s heat would subside after just one round of sex. After a few minutes of welcomed stillness, his body kicked into high gear again, groaning and rutting against Aziraphale’s leg until the angel relented and went to fetch a few toys out of the wardrobe.

“You’ll ruin my shoulder,” he told Crowley, while the demon twisted against the mattress and shivered deliciously around the pink rubber phallus he was plunging into his cunt. It had considerably more ridges and bumps than what came standard on a human model. “Really, where does one even _ buy _ something like this?”

“Nnnggghhh your shop’sss in _ Soho_,” Crowley growled, hands knotting in the sheets for dear life as Aziraphale thrust the toy into exactly the right spot and his lower body arched clear off the bed. “Whaddiyou thhhink I was doing all those timesss I said I was gonna poke around the neighborhood?”

“Oh my,” Aziraphale said airily, barely feigning surprise. “Such iniquity, going on right under my nose. Speaking of which,” he added, with a casual twist of his wrist which made stars flash behind Crowley’s eyelids, “would you mind terribly if I used my mouth on you next? Only I never did get to finish those oysters.”

“Fff_fuck_, Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, flinging an arm over his beet-red face in mortification. He climaxed again, but he didn’t have to like it.

* * *

Aziraphale brought him water and a soft washcloth to wipe down his chest and the swampy mess between his thighs. He miracled the sheets clean and willed a small mountain of pillows into existence so Crowley could lie reclined against the headboard without putting strain on his back. He brought books (unasked for) and flannel pajamas (magicked into Crowley’s preferred black silk set after protest) and fucked him into the mattress several more times (on demand and without complaint).

Crowley wasn’t sure if it went on for hours or days, but when the Mark stopped searing and a tingling, warm numbness spread through his lower body, he could not recall ever feeling so sated.

“Thanks,” he mumbled into the crook of Aziraphale’s elbow, spooned with his back to the angel’s furry chest in a floating island of warmth and pair bonding chemicals they just couldn’t seem to stop producing.

“Think nothing of it, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “Felt rather nice taking the old thing out for a spin again.”

Crowley groaned. He was much too exhausted to keep complaining about Aziraphale’s questionable automobile metaphors, especially with his Bentley still stuck back over in Cardiff. Anyone who so much as looked at his car with ill intent would experience sudden bowel-loosening terror, so it wasn’t as though he was worried, exactly. He just… preferred to keep dear things close.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said some undefined amount of time later, his voice rough and languid with the promise of a rare nap.

“Nnnmm,” Crowley answered, already much farther along toward unconsciousness.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, darling,” Aziraphale said, and oh if Crowley didn’t feel a little frisson of delight/shock/embarrassment at the brand new endearment, “but you seem to be… glowing.”

“Nnn, oh. That.” He wiggled to fit himself just a little better against Aziraphale’s chest. “Don’ worrybout it, sss’jus’ the indicator light.”

“Sorry. The what?”

Crowley’s eyes creased open a fraction. He could hear the worry in Aziraphale’s voice, but for the life of him he couldn’t see whatever it was that was causing it. There was just the darkened bedroom, the narrow strip of moonlight coming in through the window, the diffuse pink glow radiating from the Mark on his skin… 

His eyes snapped open wide.

“Oh, fuck.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There's no sex in this one, except of the "cosmic supernatural beings" variety.

Crowley was doing an impressive amount of pacing for a being that had barely been able to stand a few hours ago.

“Help me understand,” Aziraphale said, spreading his hands. He was seated at the edge of the bed, half-dressed (which, in Aziraphale’s world, meant fully dressed except he’d left his bow tie undone), watching as Crowley stalked from one end of the bedroom to the other and pulled at his hair. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about demon biology.”

“No one does,” Crowley said wretchedly, still fully nude except for his socks and the cloud of nerves settling on his shoulders. He gave up on pulling at his hair and chewed at his fingernails instead, black polish chipping under his teeth. “When it came to passing out the genitalia, Hell just copied everything it saw humans and animals doing and handed bits out at random. Even I don’t know how my insides work exactly.”

“I suppose we could… go to an expert…?”

“And what would that be, a gynecologist?” Crowley snapped. “A vet?”

Aziraphale took a long, steadying breath. They got through Armageddon together, he reasoned; they could get through whatever this was. But he needed Crowley to calm down first.

He patted the space beside him on the bed. “Come here,” he said, gently as he dared.

It took a bit of persuasion, but eventually the fight leached out of Crowley’s muscles and he shuffled to Aziraphale’s side, sinking down next to him on the mattress. He slumped.

“So,” Aziraphale said delicately, wrapping Crowley’s hand in his. It seemed the easiest, most acceptable form of physical contact to impose on him just then, though Crowley’s fingers did twitch for a moment before he relented to the touch. “New life, then.”

“Don’t call it that.” Crowley’s voice was hoarse, far away. His free hand snaked over his lower belly to cover up the Mark carved into his skin, still glowing faintly with what Crowley had explained was the ‘Proof of Seed Taken Root’ (or some other humiliating nonsense). Aziraphale supposed that, in the millennia before pregnancy tests, it must have struck Satan as a good idea, if on the melodramatic side. “I thought you said you made sure.”

“I did,” Aziraphale said, faintly hurt at the suggestion. “Do you really think I’d go through all the trouble of making an Effort and not take certain… precautions?” He’d had no part in the creation of the Nephilim, thank you very much, although it had always just slightly bothered him, wondering what was so abominable about the poor creatures in the first place. “Is it at all possible the Mark’s simply made some sort of mistake? Sent the wrong hormone up the wrong tube?”

“No.” Crowley’s hand left his stomach long enough to rake over his face and into his hair again. “It’s, it’s absolute, I don’t know _ how _ it all works but it’s never been wrong. It’ll probably be birds or snakes, ‘ve never mated with somebody without at least one animal aspect before but I guess it stands to reason…”

“You’ve lost me again, dear sweet.”

Crowley’s cheek twitched from the pet name but he didn’t remark on it. Aziraphale made a mental note to consider that one a success. He had something of a long list stored up and he’d been working on going through it, seeing which ones Crowley objected to least.

“Hellspawn aren’t… _ people_,” Crowley said with some effort. He kept his tone neutral enough, but there was a dam’s worth of hurt behind it, millennia of pain he’d much rather bite through his tongue and choke to death than talk about. “We weren’t clever enough to figure that one out. Or maybe somebody just decided we were better off focusing on quantity over quality. Most of ‘em just turn out like animals or weird chimeras or…” He trailed off, a thought seeming to occur. “You remember that little lizard thing, the usher, the one you told me they tested the holy water on?”

“It was awful. Poor creature hadn’t done anything but be there at the wrong time.”

Crowley shrugged, taking a sudden interest in his knees. “Might’ve been one of mine. Or maybe Ligur’s. One of the reptile demons.”

Aziraphale paled. “They _ killed _ your own--?!”

“Not ‘my own,’” Crowley said sharply, lifting a sulfuric gaze, his pupils narrowed to little slits despite the dimness of the room. “I don’t raise ‘em, angel, they don’t belong to anybody. Except Hell, I suppose. We wouldn’t even recognize each other. I’ve probably crushed a few on accident and not even known it, you wouldn’t believe how those bloody little salamanders get underfoot down there.”

Aziraphale’s heart ached. No matter what Crowley said, what sort of callous front he put on, they were still creatures he’d made, weren’t they? There was no way he didn’t feel some sort of connection with them.

The angel thought back to that time in Mesopotamia, the stricken look on Crowley’s face when he’d asked _ “Not the kids?” _ How he’d rescued them anyway, as many as he could, snuck them aboard the Ark disguised as baby pythons and kept them hidden below deck until the flood waters receded. And there was that time in Paris after they’d had crepes, when they’d found that peasant girl wandering the streets alone, crying and looking for her mother. And then there was the genuine fondness he showed Warlock, even when it meant breaking character. His unwillingness, even at the very end of the world, to harm Adam. Whereas Aziraphale… might really have done it, if Madame Tracy hadn’t intervened when she did.

What unimaginable cruelty, even for Hell. To take an honestly good creature like Crowley, show him the one thing he adored more than anything, and order him to care nothing for it.

Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand firmly.

“It needn’t be hellspawn, don’t you think?” he asked.

Crowley’s brows knit together in confusion. “Of course it need be,” he said. “It’s Hell’s curse, isn’t it? What makes you think it won’t just crawl off Downstairs the second it hatches?”

For a moment, Aziraphale hung on the mental image of _ Crowley laying eggs _ and then very quietly set that thought aside. “Only you’re not really of Hell anymore, are you, darling? And it is half mine, or we should assume so, at any rate--”

“--Obviously it’s yours, you don’t really think I’d let you off the hook after leaving me up the spout like this, do you--”

“--I simply meant that, well, I may not be properly angelic these days but I’m quite far from a demon, last I checked. I can’t imagine any child of mine would be joining the ranks of Satan’s armies, no matter who the other parent was.” Aziraphale paused, considering. “For one thing, I wouldn’t allow it. I’d sit them down and give them a very stern talking-to. About peace and such.”

Crowley was staring at him.

“Well,” he hedged finally. “In the end it’s your decision, of course. Your body, your choice, and all of that. I’ll support you, whatever you--”

“Angel.”

“Hm?”

“You really. Want. T-to.” Crowley’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline at the same speed his capacity for constructing sentences deteriorated. “Have a -- with me--?”

“Well, my dear, we’ve already had sort of a practice run, wouldn’t you say?”

“It -- they -- won’t even be human!”

“They won’t be an angel or a demon either,” Aziraphale reasoned.

“I meant -- I meant _ plural _ ‘they,’ you know there’s every chance I’ll -- It’s probably gonna be a whole clutch--”

“How fortunate I already have experience caring for snakes, then.”

“Azsssiraphaaaale…!” Crowley flopped back onto the bed and covered his face with a hand again, the other still held tight in the angel’s grip.

Aziraphale chuckled and laced their fingers together. His tone was light, but if he were honest with himself, the whole proposal was giving him vertigo as well. They hadn’t exactly done well by Warlock, or perhaps it was better to say the boy had done as well as he could despite them. Just imagine how they might have bungled things if they’d had the actual Antichrist to raise. And who was to say they could manage any better this time around?

But -- and here was the crucial thing -- it didn’t make Aziraphale any less eager to try it.

He lay down against the sheets beside Crowley, watching him with unmasked fondness as he blushed and fidgeted and eventually settled. Crowley pulled their joined hands over to rest on the flat of his stomach, the wicked lines of the Mark which even now radiated a faint heat, and below which lay… well, something they were going to meet very soon, it seemed.

Aziraphale let Crowley direct the touch, not wishing to startle him out of the quiet repose he seemed to be sinking into. They lay together in companionable silence for several minutes before Aziraphale inquired, gently, “So is the Mark meant to go away, now that you’re…?”

Crowley grunted in the back of his throat. “Sticks around a bit till after the delivery. Satan’s little merit badge for a job well done, I suppose.”

“It seems awfully redundant.”

“Right? That’s what I said. They’re always overdesigning bits like this. No taste.”

“In Heaven or Hell,” Aziraphale mused, thinking back fondly to some old conversations.

It occurred to him, very belatedly, that the restaurant in Cardiff must be closed by now, and that this made them officially dine-and-dashers. Aziraphale would have to think of something to make it up to the poor waiters when they went back to collect the Bentley tomorrow. 

“Little wonder She didn’t want to leave the whole making-new-life business up to anyone but Herself,” Crowley agreed, stretching out. Then he shivered, the temperature of the room reaching him again. He scooted to fit himself as neatly as he could against Aziraphale’s side. “Then again, considering Her choice in musicals, maybe that’s giving Her too much credit.”

They could take the train together, Aziraphale thought happily. You saw the full spectrum of humanity on a train.

“Perhaps it was designed by committee,” he said.

_ “Angel.” _ There was a delighted spark in Crowley’s eye, as though Aziraphale had just said something incredibly blasphemous and/or romantic.

Aziraphale smiled. He wanted to do something to make this moment perfect. Sex was out -- it was called “making an Effort” for a reason -- and so was saying the actual words they’d been quietly screaming at each other for hundreds or thousands of years. What did that leave them?

Ultimately, Aziraphale suggested they try kissing again. Nothing had exploded the last time, so they might as well push their luck.

* * *

They waited exactly six weeks before deciding to move in together.

“It’s just that it clearly isn’t birds,” Aziraphale said over brunch, cutting the smallest possible slice of his Belgian waffle. “I’ve been doing some reading and it seems most species only gestate for a matter of weeks, so you would definitely be showing by now.”

“I told you,” Crowley said, fighting down a blush as he reached for the cream. He was getting better at talking about this, Aziraphale noted with approval, though he still tended to dissolve into embarrassed incoherence out in public. “There’s no real logic to it. I’ve had puppies twice and one of the litters took twice as long as the other.”

“Puppies? Really?”

“Little hell-dachshunds. Be funny if one of those had turned up on Adam’s doorstep, eh?”

“I’m not sure I--” Aziraphale held up a hand, defeated. “No, no, you’re right, there’s no point in trying to understand the rhyme or reason to it. What I was really getting at is that you don’t appear to be due for a while yet, and if that’s the case, perhaps we should be making use of that time to look for somewhere with more space.”

“Meaning?”

“Somewhere in the country, perhaps.” He watched Crowley’s expression carefully -- which was difficult to do, what with the sunglasses, but Aziraphale had considerable experience. “We could have a nursery, a den with a real fireplace. A garden.”

Crowley hesitated, brows drawn together.

“You mean,” he said slowly, “buying a house?”

Aziraphale held onto a breath. It felt like a stone lodged in his throat. _ ‘Too fast,’ _he’d told Crowley only 50 years ago, and now look at him. Perhaps he was presuming too much, perhaps he shouldn’t try to push Crowley too far out of his comfort zone--

“Only I have this place out in South Downs,” Crowley continued, proceeding to pour the entire pitcher of cream into his coffee in full view of the other patrons, the barista, and God. “Never used it for anything, really, just came with a package of real estate I snagged at auction about a century ago. Reckon it could use some fixing up, but it’s probably faster than trying to buy something in this market.”

“South Downs?” Aziraphale repeated, the breath coming out of him in such a rush that left him faintly dizzy. “Why, that. That would be…” He could feel the telltale warmth beneath his eyes which warned of either blushing or tearing up in the near future. “Almost a cliche.”

Crowley frowned. “Too much?”

“Just enough, I should think.”

* * *

The cottage needed more than a little fixing up. It didn’t have electricity (which wasn’t so important to a pair of supernatural beings) or running water (which was, as a pair of supernatural beings who had lived in England so long that they simply couldn’t get by without tea). But worse than that, Crowley had not been overstating things when he said he hadn’t touched the property since buying it; the place was so overgrown with vines and tall grass that the two actually missed it on their first drive-by. They had to fetch Crowley’s gardening shears from the trunk just to get through the front door.

It wasn’t much better once they got inside.

“Amazing,” Aziraphale said, covering his mouth with his sleeve. “I believe it’s all one large spider web, the whole thing. Probably built over countless generations.”

“They’re still squatters,” Crowley said, uncompromising. He gave the spiders a generous 30 minutes to evacuate into the thicket out back behind the yard, then snapped his fingers. The massive web filling the foyer went up in smoke and dust. “This is gonna take a while. Sorry, angel. Knew I should’ve hired somebody to clean it back in the Fifties.”

Aziraphale felt the place could have done with being fully razed to the ground and built again from scratch, but he didn’t say that. “Nothing a few frivolous miracles can’t handle,” he promised, patting Crowley’s shoulder. “If we both work at it, we’ll be finished by sundown.”

It actually took until close to midnight, but only because Aziraphale had severely underestimated just how many termites could possibly live above a fireplace.

* * *

Relocating Aziraphale’s books proved a larger task, for two reasons. One, he still clung vaguely to the idea of being a bookseller, despite having begged Crowley to teach him how to use the internet for the express purpose of leaving himself negative Yelp reviews. Two, over the centuries Aziraphale’s book collection had expanded to such a degree that it didn’t _ technically _ occupy the Euclidean four-wall structure of the building that contained it. Sometimes even he got lost down shelves he didn’t realize he had.

“I just don’t see why you need _ four _ first editions of Milton,” Crowley said, watching from the sofa as Aziraphale willed the inner dimensions of the den to stretch a further few inches in all directions so that he wouldn’t have to place his copies of _ Paradise Lost _ on two different shelves, which was one of his larger pet peeves. “Blind old sod got all the details wrong anyway.”

“It’s fun,” Aziraphale maintained. He budged the shelf just a little bit wider so it would accommodate his sole copy of _ Paradise Regained _ as well. “It’s like watching a bombastic Hollywood adaptation.”

“It’s fanfiction, is what it is.” Crowley stretched out his impossibly long legs, resting the heels of his snakeskin boot-shaped-feet on an arm of the sofa. 12 weeks in, he was finally beginning to show slightly, just a small extra layer of padding around his stomach that could be mistaken for a bit of a beer belly on just about anyone else. Aziraphale found he couldn’t look too long without feeling a thread of electricity down his spine, equal parts thrilled and scandalized at the knowledge that he’d _ done that_. “Of course _ you _ would like it. Milton didn’t give all your best lines to Satan.”

Aziraphale hummed. “Perhaps it’s for the best that humans never wrote us into their stories. By name, I mean. Imagine if you had every teenage Satanist trying to summon you for a lark on Friday nights.”

“Doesn’t actually mean much, the addressee line on those invocations,” Crowley said, reaching for the bottle of merlot Aziraphale had left out to breathe on the coffee table. It slid pointedly out of Crowley’s reach and he tsked. “I mean, you don’t think Satan himself’s gonna show up at little Becky’s fifteenth birthday just because she and her friends are fooling around with a Ouija board, do you? We get a request for that and either we send one of the imps to move the planchette around a little or we just don’t answer at all. Former we,” he amended.

“I suppose we do similar things when it comes to prayers. Although in our case the plausible deniability of it all means we don’t even look at a lot of them,” Aziraphale said. “Former we.”

One day, the angel thought, it would be easier to talk about their old lives in the past tense. You couldn’t just undo 6,000 years of identifying with the only employer you’d ever had just by moving across the country or by having children. It was a bit like coming out of an abusive relationship, Aziraphale imagined. And to think it had taken him so long to recognize the signs...

“Are you feeling quite rested, my dear?” Aziraphale asked. He had insisted on Crowley taking a break after miracling the last stack of boxes inside, in part out of a genuine concern for his stamina, but also just because, well… because he was feeling protective. “Only I could use some help running some of these up to the nursery.”

They had both decided early on that a newborn probably didn’t need an _ entire _ room to itself, especially seeing as said newborn(s) would most likely be of the hatching variety. Plus, Aziraphale reasoned, any offspring of his absolutely must grow up to appreciate books, and what better way to start the child/ren’s education early than to cover half the room with them? Of course, out of consideration for the offspring’s expected reading level, most of the books Aziraphale selected for the nursery were Adam’s additions… as well as a few of his own favorites.

“_Winnie the Pooh_?” Crowley asked, seeing the titles the angel had set aside for him. “Really?”

“They’re _ charming_,” Aziraphale insisted. He would take no criticism from a demon who so adored the old cartoon cinema near Victoria Station that Aziraphale had expended a miracle to keep it open after 1981, just so he wouldn’t have to see Crowley’s hangdog expression upon hearing it’d been torn down. “I would have read them to Warlock, but I just couldn’t manage the voices through the teeth.”

Crowley softened at the name. Always a weak point for him, that boy. Aziraphale tipped the small stack of books into the demon’s arms and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

Crowley’s eyes widened. It was nice to look at them without the sunglasses in the way. “What was that for?”

“I understand that it doesn’t have to be ‘for’ anything,” Aziraphale said, with a small smile. Then, bringing his hands together behind his back with a little rock of his feet, he added, “Although if you’re open to the idea, I’d quite like to do a bit more of that later.”

* * *

There had been a brief moment, right when the reality of Crowley’s pregnancy was sinking in for the first time, that Aziraphale had mourned. Not for bachelorhood, which really had not applied to him for at least the past 1,000 years, if he were being honest. And not for his old life before the world failed to end, though he found he did miss the office newsletters.

But he was a sensualist (“hedonist,” Crowley would say) and he’d be lying to himself if he said he hadn’t felt slightly crestfallen upon learning that his partner had zero desire to make love outside of his heats. Aziraphale had tended to enjoy sex, back when he was having it semi-regularly, in those heady antediluvian days when Heaven was still working out its rules of engagement when it came to dealing with humans. Sex hadn’t been an all-consuming thing for him the way it seemed to be for a lot of mortals, but it was nice, at least on par with a good stretch after a long period of sitting or a mug of hot cocoa.

Thankfully, Aziraphale’s disappointment went away when he discovered that while sex was pleasant enough, kissing under the prospect of literally tearing reality asunder was far more thrilling.

They had gotten fairly good at it, if he said so himself. He especially enjoyed it when Crowley grew subdued and pliant under his attentions, defenses lowered and almost hypnotized from the unquantifiable metaphysical sensation. He became so vulnerable, so open. One wrong move from either of them could have fatal consequences, and yet here Crowley was, spread out beneath Aziraphale like the most beautiful gilded tapestry, shimmering with trust and love and all the things demons weren’t supposed to feel.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured, in that soft and fragile voice he’d first heard in the pub on the day the world was supposed to end. Aziraphale answered by wrapping him up in his arms and kissing until they were as close to one being as it was possible to be, tangled with each other in the bed and the cottage and the life that they shared.

The thunderclap, when it occurred, took them both by surprise.

“GAH.” Crowley nearly tumbled clear off the bed, held back from falling only by a lucky combination of startled angel limbs and twisted bedsheets. The candles on the nightstand -- they hadn’t yet gotten around to coercing the cottage into believing it had electricity -- guttered as the air pressure of the room shifted and reality creaked to accommodate a new presence.

Gabriel straightened his scarf and stepped out of the blackened circle singed into the floorboards.

Aziraphale was surprised to find himself moving automatically, pulling Crowley behind him even as the demon was scrabbling to do the same.

“Be not afraid,” Gabriel said, in the flattest, most aggressively unenthusiastic voice Aziraphale had ever heard out of the archangel. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly, holding the demon back with his arm as he disentangled his legs from the sheets. Under other circumstances he might have been mortified in the truest sense of the word to be caught _ in flagrante delicto _ by his old boss, but there were greater things to worry about at the moment. For instance, he was suddenly and keenly regretting giving his old sword back to that delivery man. “Run.”

“Like Hell,” Crowley hissed back, groping around the nightstand for something he could weaponize.

As if on cue, there came a silent roar, like the sound of one’s ears forcibly opening up, only filling the entire room. And then Beelzebub was standing there too, in an identical circle of charred floor. 

“Didn’t have to do that,” Crowley muttered, as the Lord of the Flies dusted a few cinders off their sash and stood beside Gabriel.

To Gabriel’s credit, he seemed just as perplexed at the appearance of a prince of Hell as Aziraphale and Crowley were. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, in that stage whisper of his that didn’t actually expect to go unheard, just disregarded, if any hypothetical interlopers knew what was good for them. “I’m on assignment.”

“Aszz am I,” Beelzebub answered stiffly, narrowing their eyes. “We’ve reczeived word that a child of great power hasz been conczzzeived.”

“Of course you received word,” Gabriel said. “We sent you the memo. But I thought we agreed my side had first dibs on this one.”

“I recall no such arrangement.”

“Uh, guys?” Crowley spoke up from the bed, still holding aloft the copy of Athanasius Kircher’s _ Turris Babel _ that Aziraphale had brought up for a little light reading. “You know you’re three months late to this one, right?”

Gabriel and Beelzebub gave him identical aggrieved looks.

“As I was about to say,” Gabriel said, puffing out his chest. “Demon Crowley, you have been charged with the holy task of--”

“_Un_holy task,” Beelzebub interrupted.

“--_great _ task of carrying a child of the Lord Our God--”

“The Fell Spawn of Satan--”

“Er, excuse me!” Aziraphale spoke up, approaching his wit’s end. Bad enough that their old managers had shown up out of the blue to ruin a perfectly romantic evening; now they were trying to rope Crowley into some kind of pro bono work. “Hello, yes, sorry to interrupt, but it appears neither of you know exactly what it is you’re doing here. Might I suggest coming back when you’re better organized?”

Gabriel and Beelzebub, who had heretofore ignored Aziraphale’s presence, now turned their attention directly on him.

“Sunshine,” the archangel said coldly. “Maybe you should stay out of things that don’t concern you, hm?”

For one rotten moment, Aziraphale shrank under his gaze. He felt himself start to curl into a ball, to try to make himself smaller, an icy nausea spreading through his stomach.

Then he registered Crowley’s weight on the mattress behind him, and he remembered what he was there to do. He straightened up.

“I rather think it does concern me,” he said, with a jut of his chin. “After all, I _ am _ the father.”

He didn’t know how he expected the two to react to that statement, but he was pretty sure the list of possibilities did _ not _ include Gabriel and Beelzebub bursting into laughter.

“Oh, Aziraphale, you’re a riot,” Gabriel said, dabbing at a nonexistent tear in the corner of his eye. “You know, we almost miss you around the office.”

Aziraphale smiled brittly, because there wasn’t much else _ to _ do, if he were being honest. Behind him, Crowley was seething so intensely that Aziraphale could feel the heat against his bare skin. He reached back blindly and squeezed the demon’s knee with what he hoped came across as reassurance.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” he offered.

“You don’t _ really _ think that child is yours, do you?” Gabriel asked, wearing a grin that was, if anything, even nastier than Beelzebub’s. “You think we wouldn’t have noticed somebody was conceiving Nephilim, after what happened the last time?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to raise a counterargument, found he had none, and closed it. True, he’d expect Heaven to have kept a close watch on any “intimate contact” between angels and humanity after that business in Mesopotamia. And true, he _ had _ made very sure he wasn’t, ahem, producing when making an Effort for Crowley… He’d just assumed he must have slipped up somewhere and accepted the consequences of it. But if that wasn’t the case, then what did that leave?

Crowley, who appeared to have worked it out just slightly ahead of him, said: “Fairly certain I don’t meet the standard for immaculate conception.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, a thought occurring. “I don’t know about that. I suppose technically all angels were ‘conceived’ without sin.”

“Technically the child is the result of when you -- _ slathered your essences _ all over each other,” Gabriel said, his lip curling in distaste. “Strictly speaking, it counts as a divine conception. Sooooo it belongs to Heaven.”

“The child isz of demon breed,” Beelzebub insisted, clearly not willing to let this go. “It’sz the rightful property of the Legionsz of the Damned.”

“Hang on,” Crowley spoke up again, his voice going a bit higher than normal. “Are you saying I got pregnant from _ kissing?_”

“That’s the long and the short of it, buddy.” Gabriel held up his hands, apparently having reached some threshold to his endurance. “Okay, I’m out. They only said I needed to come by and give you the low-down, and I’ve done that. Beez, we still on for tomorrow?”

“Choke on it, wank wing,” Beelzebub sniffed.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, once both of them had demanifested, leaving his and Crowley’s ears ringing. “Unfortunately, I’m sure that’s not the last we’ll hear from them.”

“No kidding.” Crowley finally set the Kircher volume aside on the nightstand and slithered over, grumpily tucking his chin over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I expect they’ll come calling sometime in July.”

“Oddly specific,” Aziraphale said, enjoying the warmth pressed against his back. He reached a hand up to stroke a few fingers through his demon’s hair. “Care to show your work?”

“Simple. They said child, singular. Factor in it being three months and I’m only just starting to have trouble fitting into my trousers, I’d say this is meant to go for a full nine.”

“A human child,” Aziraphale mused. Perhaps they’d need more space for the nursery after all.

“Well, human_oid_. Wouldn’t be surprised if it still came out with some scaly parts. Conceived via _ snogging_,” Crowley added, with a shake of his head. “All those centuries inventing stupid pregnancy myths to scare teens and this is what it gets me.”

Aziraphale managed a vague smile. Truth be told, he would have liked to go back to the snogging they had been up to before being so rudely interrupted, but the mood was undeniably ruined. Gabriel’s words lingered like splinters beneath his skin, digging a little deeper every time Aziraphale tried to pull them out.

“Hey,” Crowley said abruptly, seeming to sense that something was off. He slid into Aziraphale’s lap with a fluidity that should have been impossible with a human spine, arms wrapped around the back of his lover’s neck. “For the record, your old boss? Bit of a prat.”

Aziraphale’s chuckle came out more like a sigh. “You did mention.”

“Nothing he said makes any difference.”

“It makes a _ little _ difference,” Aziraphale said, but he took Crowley’s meaning. The child was still his, even if it was through divine means rather than conventional ones. But clearly Hell and Heaven weren't going to see it that way. Beelzebub had even called the child “property,” for God's sake. It made Aziraphale want to shudder, or failing that just hold onto Crowley as tightly as he could for as long as he was allowed.

“Let’s have a bath,” he proposed instead. When he wasn’t unpacking the library he’d been reading a lot of literature on first-time parenthood, and much of it seemed to suggest intimacy with one’s spouse was important, especially after a stressful day. This certainly constituted. “Shall I carry you?”

Crowley scowled, though the flush of his cheeks told a different story. Honestly, they were both so useless at this whole affection business, it was a wonder they’d worked up the nerve to even get to this part.

“I _ can _ walk, you know,” Crowley said. “I’m not waddling even a little.”

“But it’s fun,” Aziraphale reasoned. “And I did neglect to carry you across the threshold when we first moved in, as I recall.”

“Only on account of the massive spider web blocking the entryway.”

“Still.”

Crowley grunted. The angel took that as assent, dipping his head to draw him into a light, non-reality-threatening kiss.

Someday soon they would have to reckon with the full weight of what Gabriel and Beelzebub said, but it didn’t have to be tonight. Right now it could just be them and their choices -- the ones they shouldn’t have been able to make in the first place, except they had. And that fact likely scared Heaven and Hell far more than their little hellfire/holy water gambit ever could.

Anyway, they both knew it was the influences that were actually important.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession: The above was meant to be a short epilogue, but as soon as I posted the first chapter my brain was like "you know what would be horrible? if Gabriel turned up" and so this became a full second chapter. Oops! Hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Thanks for all your comments. You can find me on Twitter [@robotdere](https://twitter.com/robotdere)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ангельское поголовье и демоническая порода](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26049094) by [fandom Rabinovich Songs 2020 (WTF_Rabinovich_Songs_2020)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Rabinovich_Songs_2020/pseuds/fandom%20Rabinovich%20Songs%202020), [Fannni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fannni/pseuds/Fannni)


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